TotalEnergies, the French oil giant, has entered into a $100 million agreement aimed at conserving U.S. forests, a move that will enable the company to reduce its reported greenhouse gas emissions.

This partnership with Anew Climate and Aurora Sustainable Lands focuses on minimizing timber harvesting across 300,000 hectares in ten states, with the intention of allowing the preserved trees to absorb CO2, thereby preventing it from contributing to atmospheric warming.

The Biden administration has promoted the voluntary adoption of such initiatives, which generate carbon credits that businesses can use to counterbalance their own CO2 emissions.

However, recent research has indicated that several significant forest conservation projects have not achieved their expected emissions reductions, leading to a decline in confidence within the offset market, which saw its first contraction in at least seven years in 2023.

Adrien Henry, TotalEnergies' vice president of nature-based solutions, expressed the company's positive reception of the U.S. government's newly released guiding principles on Voluntary Carbon Markets, emphasizing their commitment to enhancing integrity and transparency in these markets.

The companies did not disclose the number of offsets expected from this investment.

TotalEnergies aims to allocate $100 million annually to projects that will offset a minimum of 5 million metric tons of CO2 each year by 2030.

The credits generated will help mitigate a portion of the CO2 emissions directly produced by TotalEnergies' operations—accounting for less than 10% of its total emissions—beyond the year 2030.

In the previous year, TotalEnergies emitted 390 million tons of CO2-equivalent, primarily from the combustion of its fuels by customers for heating and energy.

Despite the oil company’s efforts to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from its operations, it lacks a substantial plan to reduce emissions from its products by 2030. This is due to the company’s simultaneous expansion of oil and gas exploration and production alongside the development of renewable energy capacity.